IMSA: Big test ahead at Watkins Glen

The rate of Balance of Performance changes has slowed recently, although a range of changes to the TUDOR Championship's GT cars were made ahead of Watkins Glen. Elkins anticipates a few more BoP tweaks will happen after NAEC Round 3, but expects the frequency to reduce as the second half of the championship gets under way.

"We're getting pretty close," he surmised. "We've talked about coming out of Sebring and trying to be in a maintenance mode and not having changes at every event. I still think we've probably got some tweaks to do in the prototype class. It will be interesting heading into Watkins Glen because of the loads there; we're back on the same tire that we use at Daytona. Weirdly enough, the guys went and tested there with Continental and oddly enough, the P2 car seems to like that tire more than the road course tire. We're leaving things as it goes into Watkins Glen and see how that plays out. If we need to make some adjustment going into Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, we can do that."

Elkins made one change in GTLM for Watkins Glen and class-wide alterations for GTD.

"GTLM, because we have known it and the cars haven't really changed that much, that one is pretty easy," he continued. "We gave a little adjustment to the Viper, because they had been struggling some. GTD was pretty much, I won't call it a reset, but it was a bit of a reset because in that class, the Porsche is the one car that doesn't have a GT3 origin. That car has always tried to be the baseline because the goal with the two classes was to try to match the old ALMS GTC performance level so that we could keep a big gap between GTLM and GTD cars.

"What we've done there is we have added some weight to pretty much everybody and then pulled a little bit away from the Porsche to try to get that balance back to where it needed to be and use that Porsche as the baseline car. That should get us into a pretty good position. The target has always been in GTD to slow things down. That what we intended to do overall there."

Compared to the opening rounds of the TUDOR Championship where BoP complaints, race control issues, phantom and extended caution periods and poor driving standards dominated the story lines, events from Long Beach to Kansas have been calm and run according to plan.

Being able to say the same about NAEC Round 3 would be a fantastic result for IMSA, and with the aforementioned upgrades in mind, the TUDOR Championship has a prime opportunity to demonstrate excellence throughout Sunday's Sahlen's Six Hours of the Glen.​